The King's Commission

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Cowell sahib is still scribbling away at his objections, but the Turtle-rajah came round at the last, long as the goods get up-river. He suggested the sloop would do better to handle the transfer of goods from Shrike, instead of having your ship come inshore with her. Wants you to pass the word to your captain to load her up and stand ready to meet us once we get the gora logs convinced to set out the red war pole.”

  “Could you possibly speak the King’s English, Kit?”

  “Ah, sorry, not possible, you see. Been too long away from it. I can pidgin with any Samboe you want from the Hooghly Bar to the Coromandel coast. I can even get along in Creole with the slaveys up in the Blue Mountains. Who knows, by the time we’re done, I’ll master Creek, too?”

  “Well, we can open another bottle,” Alan sighed, tossing the empty onto the coverlet of the hanging cot. “Or we could get started while it’s still dark and quiet.”

  “Best go, then. Or we’ll never.” Cashman tried to smile.

  “Aye. Goddamnit.”

  “Amen, parson Lewrie.”

  Chapter 4

  Florida pretty much ain’t worth a tuppeny shit, Alan thought moodily as they lay up ashore just a few miles short of the headwaters of the Ochlockonee. The past night and day had been miserable. The air was still, and foetid with the smells of marsh and mud, the swamps aswarm with mosquitoes and biting flies, biting gnats. Alligators and poisonous snakes were two-a-penny on the banks, in the water, laying out for a bask on the tree limbs that overhung the banks when they were forced close ashore by a bend in the channel, or snuffling about under the banks in their nests and roaring at them when disturbed.

  They had made very good time, though, catching a favorable slant of wind on the first night when the river was wide enough for short-tacking inland. So far they were a day ahead of schedule.

  It was only after the sun had come up that they had been forced to row as the banks closed in and rose higher in thickly treed hammocks that blocked the breeze from the sea, and the familiar tang of salt air was left behind like a lover’s perfume. The heat wasn’t bad, though the air was stiflingly wet enough and humid enough to wring perspiration from them by the bucket, and it was a blessing that the leafy green waters could be drunk safely, or dipped up and sluiced over tired bodies.

  Bald cypress, scrub pine, and yellow-green stagnant ponds spread out on either hand under the canopy of the marshes, punctuated by water reeds, sharp-edged grasses, or jagged stumps of prodigious size. Bright birds the like of which the hands had never seen cried and stalked or fluttered below the canopy. Frogs the size of rabbits croaked at them from their resting places. Water bugs skittered on the deceptively calm water as it slid like treacle through the marshes. Now and then a hammock of higher sandy ground loomed up around a bend in the channel, covered with pines thick as the hair on a cat’s back, open to the bright sky as the result of a lightning fire, or burn.

  Otter, deer, a host of wildlife, lurked along the banks. Alan saw raccoons for the first time, and opposums hanging by their naked tails like obscene caricatures of rats. He had been almost nauseated by McGilliveray’s grunted comment that opposums were very good to eat, though he was never one to refuse a bread-room fed “miller” in his midshipman days—at least the ship’s rats were decent-sized!

  McGilliveray had gone totally native by then, stripping off his shirt to bare more pagan tattooing, wrapping a length of cloth about his head like a Hindi’s turban as Cashman styled it, naked under breech-clout, and the leggings only covering his thighs, held up by thongs from the single strap that held the breech-clout in place. Most of the sailors had tied their kerchiefs about their heads like small four-cornered mob-caps. The soldiers sported rough imitations of turbans, and had taken off their shirts as well, though their skins gleamed almost frog-belly pale in the fierce light, and several were already regretting the exposure, and patting their burns with water. At least in that regard Alan’s sailors were more fortunate, since they had had months and years of continual tanning by the sun, so they appeared at first glance as ruddy as any savage.

  “Apalachee scout over there,” McGilliveray whispered, coming to Lewrie’s side. “I shall go speak to him.”

  “Is that wise?” Cowell asked, almost prostrate with exhaustion, though he had not done a lick of work since plunking his posterior on a thwart the night before. Alan thought it comical to see how McGilliveray had tricked Cowell out in breech-clout, leggings, moccasins and calico checkered shirt, with a turban of his own, like a maggot done up as a man. He could not have fooled a European at a hundred yards, and any Indian running across him would have asked him how fast the pitch was at the new Lord’s cricket grounds.

  “We have to let them know who we are eventually, sir,” McGilliveray said. “They saw us land, tracked us up-river. I had hoped we would make contact with them last night. It’s only polite, seeing as how we’ve crossed most of their territory already.”

  “If this is the best real-estate they have, they’re welcome to every bloody stick of it,” Alan griped.

  McGilliveray stood up and waved an arm, calling out in his odd language, and from where Alan thought only a mosquito could live, up popped a full half-dozen savages, dressed in breech-clouts and tattoos only, bearing long cane bows and arrows. McGilliveray took off his moccasins and waded across a shallow slough of weeds and reeds to converse with them.

  “They don’t look like Rousseau’s noble savages, do they, Mister Cowell?” Cashman asked, coming to join them as they stood idly by watching the parley.

  “Look how lithe and tall they are, how nobly they bear themselves, sir,” Cowell disagreed softly. “One does not need much clothing in such climes. Mankind, reduced to Eden, without a houseful of possessions and gew-gaws, with no prating philosophies to occasion rancor, shorn of metaphysics, of confusing science. They are a handsome folk, you’ll not be able to deny. All pretensions of society cast aside, and relying on Nature and our Creator and their native wit for sustenance. You may speak of barbarity, of quick anger and bloody-handed murther, but has Mankind, in all our wisdom, gone far beyond those passions for all our supposed improvements, Captain Cashman?”

  “We don’t kill quite so openly and easily, sir,” Cashman replied.

  “Life, in all its facets, is closer and more personal with them, sir. They are not like us, but we were once much like them, and still are, in many ways yet. The brave man slays with a sword, the coward with an invitation to tea, if I may paraphrase the quotation, ha ha.”

  “I’ve never been scalped at a cat-lapping,” Alan quipped. “Fucked with, God yes, and damned proud of it, mind.”

  “We are in luck, Mister Cowell,” McGilliveray told them when he returned. “There are Seminolee a few miles ahead of us, in a spring camp to fish. Lots of horses.”

  “Any Spanish?” Cashman pressed.

  “None seen this far inland in weeks. Some parties passed north of the swamps and crossed the rivers heading west a few days ago,” McGilliveray/White Turtle grunted, having seemingly given up the act of smiling for the duration. “A company of horse, and one of foot, with baggage train. But they were busy driving stolen cattle they took from British colonists far off to the east.”

  “According to this map, there is a small stream that leads to the Apalachicola River,” Alan pointed out, folding out their large chart. “How deep is it? This one that leads west and nor’ west.”

  “Very shallow. Dugout canoes have trouble there,” their guide said, after peering at the map, and at Lewrie. “Another change, Mister Lewrie?”

  “We’ve made good time by water so far, why change bets now?” Alan replied, mopping his face with a kerchief. “If it goes our way.”

  “Best we continue on north.” White Turtle scowled, pointing in that direction with a chin jutted over his shoulder. “This river bends easterly to the lake. Where the lake begins we find horses. Leave the boats, and a guard over them.”

  “Damn, splitting our party again,” Cashman
spat. “What’s odds these Apalachee, or your relatives the Seminolee, would keep them safe for us. For a share of the profits, of course.”

  “If the Seminolee want something, they take it.” He shrugged.

  “Well, they can’t make off with anything big as a launch and a gig, can they?” Alan japed. “I saw something up at Yorktown, a set of poles lashed together from a horse so it could drag, instead of carry a load. We could take the rations, masts, oars, everything on the drag behind one horse. I assume we’ll march? Right, then. We haul the boats ashore and hide them from the Spanish at least. Then if they rip out the thwarts, we may still make new ones later. Wrap everything else up in the sails and shroud lines, which we can’t easily replace.”

  “You are a paragon, Alan,” Cashman beamed. “I’d never have ever thought of anything like that. See how fortunate we are, Mister Cowell, how well the Admiralty has provided for you?”

  “Let’s simply be on our way. It’s stifling in these swamps,” Cowell fluttered petulantly.

  “Right you are, then. Off we go. Andrews? Back into the boats.”

  They began to get back aboard, but several of the men from the launch shrank back in fear and scrambled back ashore quick as they could.

  “They’s a bloody snake, Mister Lewrie, sir!” one of the hands yelped.

  “Well, kill it and let’s go.”

  “No!” McGilliveray shouted. “Never kill a snake! Bad luck with my people!”

  “Wot’re we s’posed ter do wif’em,’en, kiss ’em an’ tuck ’em inna bed’r somefin’?” one of the older men muttered loud enough to hear.

  “I do it. They’re poisonous,” McGilliveray offered, and climbed into the boat, using a long club to lift the snake out and toss it over the side, after greeting it in Muskogean.

  “Notice how his speech is getting more pidgin as we go?” Cashman noted before they shoved off.

  “Yes, I had. Must be getting back into the mood of his people,” Alan replied.

  “Perhaps,” Cashman whispered, rubbing his nose. “Perhaps.”

  After camping at the lake shore with the party of Seminolee men, they started out at first light after a dip in the water and a quick breakfast. The Seminolee had provided some rather good horses, and had known what Alan was driving at when he described a drag. With some of the trade goods left behind, and at least the promise that the boats would be left undisturbed, there was nothing for it but to proceed.

  Once out of the swamps, the land opened out into grassy meadows almost like park land, where the heat was not so oppressive and the gentle winds could cool them on their march. It was early January, and the skies were cloudier than before, promising rain.

  With a pair of cotton stockings on, rolled down to the ankle, Alan found moccasins rather comfortable to march in. They went in a single file, with soldiers and sailors gathered round the pack-horses, and Seminolee out on the flanks and rear, with a scout out ahead.

  “Great warrior, the Raven,” White Turtle said, pointing with his chin to the head of the column. “The bravest man. He gives call of a raven if he sees trouble. To the left, the Wolf.”

  “Who howls, I presume?” Alan replied, meaning to be civil.

  “To the right, the Owl, who will hoot. Behind us, the Fox who will yelp.” McGilliveray nodded in agreement. “The others should go all in each others’ moccasin prints, so it only looks like one man. Might be a big party, might be one man alone. Makes for safety.”

  “Seems safe enough now.”

  “Nothing is safe here, you will learn.”

  “But it’s so open!” Alan protested, shifting the sling of his fusil on his shoulder. “Two hundred yards to the trees, and the scouts.”

  “Hide behind tree, hide in those groves. Lay in the grass. Ten warriors, twenty? They could be on you before you get that gun to your shoulder.”

  “Delightful.” Alan shuddered. “Look, about that snake yesterday. Never kill a snake.”

  “No.”

  “Never wash meat in a stream, never piss in one, never put out a fire with water. Never get downstream of a widow, or upstream from a wife. Avoid women in their monthlies like the plague. What else?”

  “A great deal more, Lewrie,” McGilliveray said. “But it makes sense to us. Women are a separate animal from man. Not like us at all, so we have to be careful we are not defiled. We know the Thunder Boys are the ones who create mischief in this world, and people bring it on because they mixed elements that should not have been mixed. In the world above, everything is perfect, each animal, each plant, and man and woman, larger than us, and perfect. Down below in the underworld, monsters and witches and Water-Cougar, one of everything, but evil. In the right here world, sometimes the perfect comes down, sometimes bad comes up from below, like Spear-Finger, the old woman who kills and steals men’s souls to feed on so she can live forever. Even when she was finally killed, she did not really die. The good and the bad always come back, so people must always be on their guard not to defile their spirit, or offend the Great Spirit by defilement. For their own good, their family and clan, and their nation.”

  “Is that what you believe personally?” Alan asked. “Are you a Christian, or do you believe the native religion?”

  “When my father took me to Charleston, and then to England, he taught me about God and Jesus, but I always found it a little confusing,” McGilliveray admitted. “Even after a year at Cambridge, I find the old ways more comforting. Mister Cowell and his friends tried to explain the unexplainable as he puts it, but the various points of doctrine are troubling to me.”

  “Ah well, most people have that problem. Most call themselves Deists and let it go at that.” Alan grinned.

  “Then you do not honor your God who made you, as we do. To say that God exists, and then continue your life your own way, is to negate your belief,” McGilliveray expounded. “Others leap about and speak no known tongue, shake and dance in glory. They raise the Bible on high and declare everyone sinners but themselves. But then they go out and kill eagles for sport, kill snakes, sleep with their women in their courses. All Christians treat the earth as a dead thing to walk upon, and all animals as dumb food. When we kill an eagle to get its feathers for our great men, it takes much prayer, and we ask the eagle, and the Great Spirit, who is most in the birds, and in the eagles of any race of animals on earth, to forgive us for we have to do this. Christians would strip this land bare, chop all the trees, slaughter all the game far beyond what they could eat, because God gave man dominion back in the cloud-time before the clans saw their signs. Look here,” he said, pointing to a circle tattoo on his chest, which enclosed a four-legged equilateral cross.

  “This is the circle of the world between the sky and the underworld. The four principal directions, and where they meet, right here now. Everyone of Indian blood knows here is where he must live if he wants to be good, following the laws laid down by the Great Perfect Spirits.”

  He reached out and put a hand inside Alan’s shirt.

  “Hold on, my good fellow!” Alan snapped, unused like any Englishman at being pawed at. But McGilliveray took hold of his small juju bag strung about his neck and weighed it thoughtfully.

  “How odd. I had expected to find a cross,” McGilliveray said with a wary expression. He let go of the bag so that Alan could tuck it back into his shirt. “The white man’s cross is off-center. There is no sense of being centered, and the directions lead off to nothing, which is why all white men, all Christians are so unhappy, and want to have dominion. I saw the old roods, the Celtic crosses of your people in the long ago, which had circles around the center, but the directions go beyond the circle. They must have been close to the truth in those days, but even so, they never really knew peace.”

  “We could have had a fish, you know. What would you make of that, I wonder?” Alan groused, still resenting the manhandling.

  “Then it would be a great fish that swims the world’s oceans and never knows rest,” McGilliveray intoned. “If
one cannot find peace, then one will try to run everything to one’s own satisfaction in the search for peace. How much better are my people, who live so close and snug to each other, in a great family. We know want, but we share equally, not like you who store up food and wealth from each other and let other men of your kind starve or beg. If our clan or town is rich in food, we all eat well. If there is little, we all starve together, and pray that we have lived well, so that the Great Spirits and the perfect spirits of the deer people, bear people and fish people may come to our hunters and help us by giving us their lives. If a man was starving back in your London, and he came to your door, would you send out a slice of your roast beef to him? I do not think you would, sir. To you, all is property and goods. You are a Christian yourself?”

  “Church of England, and damned proud of it, sir.”

  “So many of your people say that, but they do not really believe in their crucified son of God, not in their hearts. And which God do you serve with your little bag?” McGilliveray asked with the smugly superior tone of anyone who thinks he is more righteous than the next.

  “It’s a good luck charm, from a young lady of my acquaintance,” Alan had to admit sheepishly. “One of her servants made it … to keep me safe from drowning, and such.”

  “Not even representative of any god, then. How sad. What is in it, do you know?”

  “No, I don’t. And what’s in yours?” Alan asked.

  “My personal medicine.”

  “Then please be so good as to leave mine alone in future,” Alan spat.

  McGilliveray glared and trotted toward the head of the column.

  “Bet the Wesley brothers would love you,” Alan muttered to himself once McGilliveray had gotten far enough off, thinking how absurd it was to be discussing theology with a Cambridge man in breech-clout and scarifications with his bare arse waving about in the breeze.

  At the evening stop, not half a day’s march from the second lake where they would find McGilliveray’s tribal towns, Alan took a tour of his men, seeing to it that they were bedded down comfortably and had a hot meal. Some of the Seminolee had put up some birds and nailed them with their insubstantial cane arrows tipped with fish bones or tiny flints. There was sofkee, a hominy meal mush, a soup or stew of the birds, succotash of sweet corn kernels and beans, and cool clear water to wash it down.